First Grade Torture

Tonight we were discussing peanuts and how schools are esentially peanut free. Taylor isn't allowed to take a peanut butter sandwich to school and I wondered how my brother would have survived elementary school, since I am quite sure that is all he ever took for lunch for 6 years.

And it reminded me of this thing that happened in Grade One and I was sure you would all want to hear about it. But first I have to say that this happened in 1980 and it saddens me to realize that half of the people I know of that read this blog weren't even born yet. Telling stories from your childhood makes you realize how freaking old you are. Me= old before her time.

We had a healty eating month (or perhaps it was a week or two...it was 26 years ago, people, do not expect me to remember the small details) and each day we tried a different healthy food. Fruit, vegetables, whatever. I do seem to recall ants on a log, of which I ate the cheese whiz (healthy? somehow I doubt it) and the raisins but managed to avoid the majority of the celery, a food I hate to this day. And then there was the day we had to eat peanut butter cookies.

You see why I had to point out that it was 1980? A few years later and peanut butter was a banned substance, now considered a possible killer. Where were all the nut allergies when I was six to save me from the nastiness that was peanut butter cookie day?

We got our cookies after morning recess. Being the smart cookie that I was, I put mine in my desk. These were 1970s desks, if you recall the sort, with an open hole where your books and whatnot went. Unlike today's fancy desks, with a pull out drawer. All was fine until just before lunch when Paul freaking White, the little red headed bugger, walked along looking into peoples' desks. "Mrs. Windsor! Emma didn't eat her cookie!" See now, if I had been a very smart cookie I would have shoved that cookie to the back of my desk instead of leaving it at the front. Not so bright. "Isn't it a good thing that I looked into desks, Mrs. Windsor?" Paul says. Oh, that boy was a brown noser to the highest degree. Mrs. Windsor tells me to eat the cookie. "I can't," I say, "I don't like peanut butter." She tells me I have to, I cry. I'm not joking, I really hate peanut butter. If Tommy, as my brother was known by then, wants to annoy me he chases me with a piece of bread with peanut butter on it (or pigs feet, but that'a a whole other story.)

Mrs. Windsor moves my desk behind hers. Her desk is in a sort of alcove, I can see nothing, not the board, not a single other desk. There I sit for the rest of the day, right through lunch recess and afternoon recess, until I finish the cookie. Which I eventually did. It took me 3 1/2 hours and there was a lot of tears and a lot of gagging. But I did it. And I immediately went home and told my mother how mean Mrs. Windsor was and what a bastard Paul White was. I am quite sure I did not use the word bastard. Bastard was a no-no word in our house, and one I did not know until I was older, but definitely knew by the time I was 11. As you may recall, I called the dog a bastard and later that day it ran away...

I can not recall what my parents reaction to this was. I assume there was one, they were usually fairly pro-active in cases like this. After all, in the third grade my dad called the school and got mad at my teacher for marking a spelling test 15/16 because I spelt grey the English way instead of the Canadian way. (I no longer know which one is the English spelling, gray or grey.) I should hope they did something. I was certainly never forced to eat any other food again.

I am still anti peanut butter today. Taylor and Saoirse love it, Liam hates it. I think I made Taylor one sandwich in her life, usually her dad would do it and once she was 3 and could use a knife she made them herself. I have been forced to spread peanut butter on toast for Saoirse when William isn't home but this summer I have been able to get Taylor to do it. So much for motherly love, I won't even give Saoirse a kiss until the peanut butter had been washed away by a drink.